Jas­mine and Leo Thomp­son turned a di­vided pe­riod prop­erty back into a beau­ti­ful fam­ily home

Be­hind the façade of Jas­mine and Leo Thomp­son’s re­fined Hamp­shire home is a hub­bub of fam­ily ac­tiv­ity – the cou­ple have five chil­dren aged be­tween six and 18. ‘Leo and I have de­mand­ing jobs, and the chil­dren are in and out of the house, so life is a lit­tle hec­tic at times,’ says Jas­mine.

It was a boun­ti­ful gar­den and un­equalled views of the sur­round­ing coun­try­side that per­suaded the cou­ple to buy the house as a fixer-up­per 1o years ago. ‘We needed a space large enough to ac­com­mo­date every­one,’ ex­plains Jas­mine. ‘When I stood on the ter­race I thought, wow, and I said to Leo, “This is it”.’

The Cape Dutch-style house, built by Queen Vic­to­ria’s for­mer physi­cian, had been di­vided into wings and par­tially rented out by the pre­vi­ous own­ers. ‘They were an el­derly cou­ple who had brought up their fam­ily here,’ says Jas­mine. ‘There was so

much love in this house, it felt like we were tak­ing on a won­der­ful legacy. The chal­lenge was to care­fully re­store the prop­erty back into one res­i­dence and to make it our own.’

Shortly af­ter mov­ing in, how­ever, Jas­mine fell preg­nant with her youngest daugh­ter, Amelia, and so, in the be­gin­ning, it was a case of hastily re­mov­ing par­ti­tion walls. Then, a cou­ple of years ago, Jas­mine called on in­te­rior de­signer Stephanie Dun­ning to help plan a more ex­ten­sive ren­o­va­tion. ‘With the chil­dren and our jobs, we sim­ply didn’t have time to fin­ish it our­selves,’ she re­calls.

Once the struc­tural ad­just­ments and restora­tion of the orig­i­nal par­quet floor­ing was com­plete, Jas­mine’s dec­o­rat­ing brief was re­fresh­ingly sim­ple: light and airy. Stephanie de­liv­ered a muted pal­ette, shot through with pops of rich colour. The rooms are spar­ingly fur­nished with care­fully cho­sen an­tique pieces. ‘I don’t like too much fur­ni­ture, but the bal­ance and flow is just right,’ says Jas­mine. ‘As well as be­ing stylish, it feels wel­com­ing and com­fort­able. It’s a won­der­fully chaotic house, but ev­ery time I walk through the front door, I think, “I wouldn’t have it any other way”.’